If you don't know how to code but still want to contribute to crawl, there are several ways you can do it:

Vaults

Tiles

Speeches

Descriptions

We currently get lots of vaults and tiles, but we never have too much of them, so keep them coming! We get much less contributions for speeches and descriptions. If you can write decently, that's a simple way to contribute to the game.Thanks!

<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

One aspect of descriptions that would be very nice to help with is the adding of quotations from literature. From my first games of Crawl I was impressed by the erudite citations from high literature, ancient and modern, tucked away in the descriptions. Bertolt Brecht on human beings, Julius Caesar on bread, Shakespeare on potions...I think my favorite is the bit from Plutarch on gold.

If you happen to read literature in between sessions of Crawl, please keep your eye out for quotes that could be used in the game. With the very international nature of Crawl's player base, we might cast the net wider and include more extracts from non-Anglophone national literatures.

click report issue at the top of the page, then select patch as a category.

How do I use this to contribute speeches and descriptions? It looks like I'm reporting a bug. Do I just skip all the bug reporting stuff and use the "Upload file" part to upload descriptions and speeches? Would love to contribute but it's just not very clear how.

I absolutely love the idea of writing dialogue/speeches/descriptions for the various denizens of the dungeon! I already sent a 'bug report' in the fashion you suggested, Mr. Dwarf Hopefully I did not submit something stupid or redundant, as I just had an idea or two pop into my head and sent them quickly in excitement, before realizing maybe the character in question (Nikolai, one of my favorites!) already said similar things...

Concerning that, is there a way, or a page or some resource, to see the current speeches/dialogue enemy characters use? I'd love to write up all sorts of things to try and contribute, I love this game and would be honored to be a part of it in any way. Even if I were to contribute 1,000 speech ideas and only one was selected! I just don't want to be redundant or waste time submitting speeches that contradict dialogue already in place. Thanks in advance everyone!

BezerkerJerseyTinkerBell wrote:I absolutely love the idea of writing dialogue/speeches/descriptions for the various denizens of the dungeon! I already sent a 'bug report' in the fashion you suggested, Mr. Dwarf Hopefully I did not submit something stupid or redundant, as I just had an idea or two pop into my head and sent them quickly in excitement, before realizing maybe the character in question (Nikolai, one of my favorites!) already said similar things...

Concerning that, is there a way, or a page or some resource, to see the current speeches/dialogue enemy characters use? I'd love to write up all sorts of things to try and contribute, I love this game and would be honored to be a part of it in any way. Even if I were to contribute 1,000 speech ideas and only one was selected! I just don't want to be redundant or waste time submitting speeches that contradict dialogue already in place. Thanks in advance everyone!

Look in your Crawl directory, /dat/database/monspeak.txt for the database, /docs/develop/monster_speech.txt to know what it all means and how it works.

Grimm wrote:Also, BezerkerJerseyTinkerBell, did you submit the "bug report" on Transifex or mantis?

You can't submit speeches on transifex. Databases are not on transifex yet, only descriptions.Wild ideas should better be posted in this forum, like the singing sword thread. Only submit reviewed and polished contributions on Mantis (and in patch format if possible)

<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Following up what galehar said: I promise to take care of speech, like I already do with the Singing Sword lines. It might take a bit (up to several weeks) between submission and me looking over it and putting it trunk, but it will happen. I suggest that you use new topics for new speech proposals, at least if there is no recent one already. If you're not sure, just post some lines and ask for feedback -- which you'll get quickly.

Okay, well perhaps I got over excited and I apologize if I wasted anyone's time. I've just thought before that it'd be great to help out with the game. I do believe I sent it in Mantis, and just in a general text way. I guess that was a mistake, and I won't do that again. I'll start a thread on the particular dialogue I would like to present for opinions. Thanks y'all!

BezerkerJerseyTinkerBell wrote:Okay, well perhaps I got over excited and I apologize if I wasted anyone's time. I've just thought before that it'd be great to help out with the game. I do believe I sent it in Mantis, and just in a general text way. I guess that was a mistake, and I won't do that again. I'll start a thread on the particular dialogue I would like to present for opinions. Thanks y'all!

Yes, I saw it, but didn't get around to make a comment.It is better to ask questions like those you put on Mantis over here. If you know where you are going, then you upload a bunch of lines on Mantis. Alright?

Assuming they're still wanted, are quotes from novels and the like acceptable as long as they're fully attributed? I think a lot of the uniques could have extra flavor if they had great lines while sending you to your doom.....

prozacelf wrote:Assuming they're still wanted, are quotes from novels and the like acceptable as long as they're fully attributed? I think a lot of the uniques could have extra flavor if they had great lines while sending you to your doom.....

Sure, although it seems your confusing 2 different things: quotes and monster speech. Quotes are displayed after the description when examining a monster and you can submit them directly through the transifex interface (see my recent post on how to do that).Monster speech is what they say while you fight them and it's displayed in the message area. They are not usually pulled from literature but it's possible (although there's no way to attribute them). You can't submit them through transifex so you'll have to use mantis for that. Existing speech is in dat/database/monspeak.txt so have a look at it to see how it's formatted.

<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Sorry to be so terse before. Transifex will, by way of galehar, take care of quotes you come up with. As far as speech goes, I suggest you provide some lines here. Look around in the database folder of Crawl... there is speech for uniques, ghosts, the singing sword, and there are imp and demon taunts. For all of these, more is welcome!

How far along is the AI behavior? There are certain tactical decisions I think some monsters should have a chance to perform during certain situations.

"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessaDid I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!

"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessaDid I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!

prozacelf wrote:Assuming they're still wanted, are quotes from novels and the like acceptable as long as they're fully attributed? I think a lot of the uniques could have extra flavor if they had great lines while sending you to your doom.....

Sure, although it seems your confusing 2 different things: quotes and monster speech. Quotes are displayed after the description when examining a monster and you can submit them directly through the transifex interface (see my recent post on how to do that).Monster speech is what they say while you fight them and it's displayed in the message area. They are not usually pulled from literature but it's possible (although there's no way to attribute them). You can't submit them through transifex so you'll have to use mantis for that. Existing speech is in dat/database/monspeak.txt so have a look at it to see how it's formatted.

I was sort of conflating the two, but I'd be interested in contributing to either. It would be awkward at best to attribute quotes in the actual monster speech. Anyway, I'll check out your post about the transifex interface.

This thread has a nice list of some monster tiles I thought could use work; you might try your hand at some of those. And in general you can just look around in the rltiles folder and pick whichever you'd like to work on.

Alternately, THE RELEASE PLANS PAGE of the development wiki shows items that might not have been addressed, and (used to) including tiles that have to be created. Check the latest release number.

"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessaDid I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!